


Black Tuesday

by Tejoxys



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: 1920s, F/M, Fan-Created Personae, Genderbending, Historical References, How Do I Tag, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, S&M, it's blacksand but they're playing at being other people, not an AU but reads like one, or something, way too much history between these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 20:54:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1124277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tejoxys/pseuds/Tejoxys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Blacksand Week 2 on tumblr, inspired by Gretchensinister's prompt, "Glitter and Doom." I like the idea of larger entities splitting bits of themselves into independent agents, who can then work on micro-projects. The line from the <i>Rise of the Guardians</i> trailer, “We go by many names and take many forms,” got me thinking about which ideas and figures in pop culture could be somebody’s agent.</p><p>We somehow got from that, to the American Stock Market Crash of 1929.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Tuesday

  
The room was crowded, all voices, scent of food and perfume, rustle of expensive fabrics draping healthy bodies, shoes alternately clacking on hardwood and padding on soft Persian rugs. No children attended this late-Monday gathering. Men in beautiful suits with slicked-back hair, catlike women in gowns that turned their silhouettes into notes of music, left the workday behind to smoke and flirt and dance. Now and then a flask emerged from a purse or pocket, a little thrill, a little shiver over breaking the law. Prosperity itself was an emotion that rolled among the revelers, round and cheerful as the early pumpkins that had just begun to grace front steps around the city.

The man wearing the most genuine smile did not appear to celebrate at all. His dark suit fit well, but did not make him look any healthier. His skin matched the ghostly haze of cigarette smoke that hung just above most people’s heads, low enough that his passage cut a furrow through it. Wherever he lingered, faces briefly tightened, as though their owners had suddenly remembered leaving the stove on at home. He would just-as-briefly offer a touch, or a whisper, or even just a look, and they relaxed once more into easy enjoyment. If anyone thought to find the host and ask, “Who is that man?” or the host thought to ask around, “Who invited him?” well, …that thought never made it very far, because they could no longer remember which man.

It was almost complete. He had played this game for months, in offices, in private meetings, on market floors, at mixed parties and in men’s clubs, all in service to the greater part of him, who could not spare such attention to detail. On this fading evening in the last week of the month, approaching the end of a year and the closing of a decade, it was almost complete. The gray man grew thinner by the day, feeding on scraps, forbidden to incite his assigned prey to feed him better. Pain coiled within him. He didn’t have much longer. But that was all right; his opponent didn’t have much longer, either. He would feast before the end. If his timing was right, _immediately_ before the end. A blaze of glory, and maybe—just maybe—someone to share in the brilliance as their metaphorical ship went down.

The other must be here somewhere. He had tracked the mark of his creator’s greatest enemy all this time, shadowing the other agent without ever catching sight of them, dutifully nipping out weeds of self-doubt in the hearts of those planted with golden seeds of optimism. Many times he thought for sure the game was up. Now, on this final night, he hoped it was. He wanted the closure his creator could never know.

Kohl-lined honey eyes found him first. It was her will to reveal herself at last, or he certainly would have spotted her before. The enemy agent stuck out at much as he did, in precisely the opposite way. Her sun-kissed skin shimmered with vitality. Dressed in gold from head to toe, she was unfashionably short, and much rounder than the average flapper, all curvaceous kindness veiled inside a pillar of delicate ruffles. She had one half of a brocade loveseat to herself, keeping guests away from the other half by unknown means, for surely, anyone would wish for the warmth of her attention.

…Which was not to say warmth was exclusive of great anger. The gray man smiled at the way she pressed her lips into a grim line and gripped the loveseat’s arm more tightly. He cut a path through the smoke like a shark’s fin, her eyes like blood in the water.

“What a sweet little armful you are,” he said, leaning overhead. “Could you have crafted a more conspicuous persona?”

She gave him an exaggerated once-over, and made a face that said he was one to talk.

He grinned and dropped into the empty space on the loveseat. “So, what do you think?” he said in a conversational tone. “You wanted a world without fear. I haven’t the authority to go quite that far, but tell me, how are you liking my localized approximation?”

He was looking at her face and not her hands, so he missed whatever it was she did with them at first. “What, can’t you speak?” he needled. She flung up her hands. “Sorry, I—what on earth is that? American Sign Language? I don’t have that one very well yet; you’ll have to go slowly. Been a bit busy, you know.”

With a long-suffering glare, she repeated herself: -Explain.-

“Come on, I know you’ve been all over town. Didn’t you wonder why there wasn’t more panic last week? Weren’t you even looking for me?”

-What did you do?-

The gray man linked his hands around his knee and played at modesty. “Oh, nothing, really. I only freed everyone up to follow you.” His eyes danced like tumblers of gin. “You have no special love for powerful people, but they certainly love you. I helped them love you more. All of those niggling questions—‘Is this the safest move?’ ‘How well do I know this lender?’ ‘Do our fortunes rest on pillars of sand?’ ‘What happens if…?’—I silenced them all. It was easy, really, after the first dozen times.” He caught his breath at the look of dismay on her face.

-No-, she said. -You don’t hurt yourself. You never hurt yourself. You love yourself.-

“What’s the matter? Never imagined I’d undermine my own interests to get back at you?” He smiled thinly. “We’re entering a new era, my dear. Pain is my natural state now. I can stand a little more for my greater aspect’s victory.”

She told him, -People aren’t stupid. These are professionals; they won’t let it happen. There is no victory. Fear does not rule.-

“Not yet. Soon. Perhaps tomorrow. And it’s curtains for both of us, I’m afraid.”

A lit cigarette appeared in her hand. He nervously watched the red tracks in the air as she snapped, -It doesn’t matter. I’ll come back.-

“I’m sure you will, but you’ll never look like this again.” He warily reached out to touch her cheek. Her fingers tightened on the cigarette, mirroring the tightness in his chest, but she tucked her face into his palm. His thumb picked up glittery makeup where it stroked below her eye.

“I know, sweetheart,” he said. “You liked this decade, and this country. Things changing for the better, so it seems, in leaps and bounds. Such celebration of leisure, such brightness on everyone’s horizon. More people free to dream than ever before. I helped you build your castles to the sky… and tomorrow, down they fall,” he finished. “I did nothing criminal; this one is all yours.”

-You are in big trouble,- she said, color rising in her cheeks. -Big trouble.-

“Then won’t you join me in an exercise of justice? It is our last night. I’m done for, in any case; I suppose you may last a few days more.” Gin-glass eyes glittered. “Distract us. It’ll make you feel better.”

No one was watching to see the golden woman extinguish her cigarette in the hollow of the gray man’s throat. Nor did anyone particularly notice their swift departure, or the peculiar way a wisp of smoke seemed to be acting as a leash from her hand to his collar, or the way her feet did not quite touch the floor. Everyone heard the front door swing shut all by itself. A chill breathed itself into the room, stirring thoughts of autumn, and decline.

 

* * *

 

In an apartment some distance from Wall Street, two figures lay in bed listening to dawn pigeons on the windowsills. Both faced away from the window. The gray one, no longer precisely a man, cradled the golden one, no longer precisely a woman, in long arms crisscrossed with strange, ropelike burns. There were more around the gray ankles, and all along the smooth expanse of back.

Sunlight took its sweet time to find the grimy windows and crawl inside. The gray figure watched the rectangles of light creep along the ceiling. When they reached the bed, the gray servant’s term would end. The other still expected to survive. A kiss pressed to a padded shoulder blade was answered with a caress across stony knuckles.

Honey eyes snapped open at the first bell. Blocks away, it was not a sound heard, but a tolling felt inside. It brought an echo in its wake: _Fear does not rule._

“It does now,” said the dying servant. “It does now.” The burns began to heal.

Time passed, and the patches of sunlight crept closer. The golden agent’s trembling worsened with each tolling of the bell. The gray servant whispered and soothed and held, waiting for the beauty of shared annihilation.

At the touch of sunlight, one laughed, and the other kissed the laughter away.

 

* * *

 

Inspectors entering the apartment days later found a bed full of soot. In a fine layer over everything else—and no, it was not dust, one inspector argued fiercely—was a fine, shimmery powder, as though an enormous moth had dashed itself apart against the walls. Nothing came of analysis, so they let the landlord clean it up and lease it out again.

Until the building burned decades later, some of the powder lingered below the floorboards, fragments of the American Dream glittering in the dark.

 


End file.
